Legends of Wrestling II

"Legends of Wrestling II". It doesn't really have the same kick to
it as "WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth", does it? There's none of
the flamboyance, egotism, showmanship and outright lunacy of a
SmackDown title in the words "Legends of Wrestling II". As a brand,
it sounds more like one of those 60-minute-long videos full of
cheap archive footage, which you only see advertised on second-rate
digital TV channels. And if you do buy it, you have a 30 day no
quibbles money back guarantee, as long as you can get hold of the
company before they leg it with your dosh.

Oh well, at least it's consistent.

This bout is scheduled for one fall…

As you might expect from our depressing intro, Legends of
Wrestling II is by-the-numbers in all but a handful of areas.
There's a career mode, which has you fighting to win through
territorial qualifiers by whipping the crowd into a frenzied mob,
with simple storylines and largely predictable outcomes. Beyond
that, there are the obligatory multi-player and create-a-wrestler
modes. The latter is a bit of fun, but since you can't play with
the model's height and girth, you'll soon lose interest and go
running back to SmackDown. This is a recurring theme.

Right: next up, before we part the ropes and hit the canvas, let's
address the so-called innovation that runs through the heart of
LoW2; the "IPS" system. And no, sorry, we don't care what it means.
IPS is a simple principle, which drives every bout in the game.
When you get into the position to reverse an opponent's move or
extend your own combination, a little meter pops up and you have to
jam a button when a dancing pointer hits the shaded area. Do this
and you'll reap rewards. Besides this, the basic gameplay consists
of grappling (triangle/circle) and then sliding into piledrivers,
suplexes and other moves to inflict damage.

However, as you'll quickly see from your AI opponent's adeptness
with IPS, victory in LoW2 is all about timing a reversal and
engineering it into a combo - by hitting a button at the right
time. Success is a matter of using the meter to your advantage more
often than your opponent can, flatly ignoring for the most part the
rigorous task of learning arsenals of moves and developing
strategies. You could plug away until the rest of the game is
second nature and moves, modifiers and combos flow from your
fingertips like a river of milk and honey, but why bother when you
can just stab a button in the right fraction of a second to greater
acclaim?

Naturally, the IPS system also strips the multi-player game of much
of its entertainment. Once you both get the hang of it, matches
turn into long, drawn out affairs which only end when either your
opponent's or your own hand-eye coordination give way too often. Or
if you take to physically attacking them.

Old and hairy

Visually, Legends II it's the closest
thing to those old chunky action figures everyone had as a kid,
with huge, disproportionate muscles and menacing looks. Sadly
though, frustrating problems with collision detection mean they
behave a lot more like action figures than real wrestlers.
Characters occasionally fall beneath a blow but rarely line up
correctly, failing to lock horns in a natural manner or even lock
eyes particularly convincingly.

Then there's the age-old issue of waiting for animations to
conclude before accepting more input. Ye gads, why in the hell is
this still a problem in 2003? All right, it has its applications
(in footy titles, for instance), but it's an obstacle here.
Meanwhile, shove more than two wrestlers in a ring and you suffer
the hateful slowdown you probably expected at some point (which
seems unreasonable given that, besides the characters, nothing in
LoW2 looks either high resolution or particularly detailed), and
the camera tends to fly off into the distance, making it very
difficult to judge distances and respond quickly.

So what is there to recommend about LoW2? The graphics? No. The
sound? The first peeling throbs of tedious nu-metal piping through
the speakers should be enough of an answer. The gameplay? Not
really. The problem is that wrestling "back then" was about
emotional drama (Brett Hart trying to win his first belt from Mr.
Perfect, for example), and not so much spectacular athletics, which
leaves LoW2 clutching at straws right from the get-go. The
multi-player? It's one big stalemate. In fact, the only thing we
really enjoyed about LoW2 was the DVD extra-style interviews, and
they're certainly not worth 40 quid.

Given a belting

To be honest, Legends of Wrestling II will never live on anyone's
recommended list, but pitched between December and February it
might have found some comfort in the arms of lonely gamers. As it
is, we're just itching to get it off our desk so I can tuck into a
plethora of February and March-bound games of a much higher
calibre. And therein lies the game's problem: it's pretty average,
nothing special - and it's nothing special in a genre which already
has a very handsome, throbbing king, aptly named SmackDown, and
it's nothing special due out in the same month as some really
highly anticipated titles across all formats.

Unless you have some peculiar obsession with "the good old days" of
wrestling before it grew into a peculiar over-exaggerated American
soap opera, or idolise the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks,
then don't let curiosity get the better of you. Legends of
Wrestling II is onto a loser from the outset and doesn't even make
the best of what it has. SmackDown retains the belt.

5
/
10

Legends of Wrestling IITom BramwellReview - Acclaim's second attempt at wrestling is another warm-up act2003-02-05T14:06:00+00:00510